Official figures show Obama as Biggest Deportator of Foreigners

The President of the United States, Barack Obama. Image by Pablo Martinez Monsivais AP

Recently published official figures show that during the first seven years of President Barack Obama’s administration, more than 2.7 million foreigners were deported, the largest number in more than a century.

Figures from the 2015 Immigration Statistics Yearbook, released mid-December, show that since Obama took office as the first black president of the United States on January 20, 2009 through September 30, 2015, a Total of 2,749,854 undocumented immigrants were deported from the United States.

That’s a new record

Ever since deportation figures came into existence in the 1890s , President Obama has archived the highest number of expulsions of foreigners, these immigration statistics are know among circles of experts such as immigrant lawyers in the courts, immigrant rights activists and journalists covering the source.

Under the second and last presidency of Grover Cleveland from March 1893 to March 1897, a total of 9,069 foreigners were deported, according to figures from the Yearbook otherwise known as “The Bible”.

President George W. Bush runs second to Obama under whose mandate a total of 2,012,539 foreigners were expelled. During the presidency of Bill Clinton, the total of deportees was of 869,646, according to the numbers of the Yearbook.

Many supporters of Obama and some of his own advisory have questioned claims that he is responsible for a large number of deportations, prompting that in 2014 the president of the National Council of La Raza, Janet Murguía, calls him a “deportee boss”.

In a speech two years ago Murguía severely criticized President Obama with this statement: “For us this president has been the deportador in chief.”

Also in the same year of 2014, Homeland Security Secretary Mr. Johnson informed the Federal Congress that figures linked to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that indicated a record of deportations did not really reflect deportations but rather Returns to Mexico from people near or in the same line between the two countries without a formal deportation process.

Johnson’s explanation came during a congressional hearing when a Republican lawmaker asked him if the Obama administration was inflating his deportation figures.

“Under the Obama administration, more than half of those expulsions attributed to ICE are not actually the result of Border Patrol arrests that would not have been reported in previous administrations?” Asked Republican John Culberson from Texas.

“Right,” Johnson replied.

However, when the Yearbooks of 2014 and 2015 were published, there was no correction of deportation figures in the publications or any note with Johnson’s clarification. In fact, the figures in the Yearbook are clearly labeled as deportations, not as border returns.

“The deportations are the compulsory and confirmed departure of an alien who is inadmissible or deport-able outside the United States based on a deportation order,” according to a footnote to the list of deportations from 1892 to 2015.

The Yearbook is a Publication of the Bureau of Immigration Statistics, which is one of many agencies belonging to the DHS, which Johnson oversees.

DHS declined to comment on the apparent discrepancy between Johnson’s clarification and the Yearbook figures. ICE, for its part, sent the CTN News its own 2001-to-2015 expulsion figures, but said in an e-mail that “the figures as of 2007 include the border returns Johnson referred to”.

The ICE figures are different from the Yearbook figures, but not much.

For example, for the 2007 ICE shows a total of 291,060 “deportations” compared to 319,382 in the yearbook.

In 2012, ICE figures show 409,849 “expulsions” compared to 416,324 in the Yearbook

By the way, returns that are not considered deportations seem to be listed separately within the Yearbook. They are not included in the list titled deportations.

Neither ICE nor DHS explained how these figures were compiled or what link they may have with the ICE’s.

The United States has had immigration laws since at least 1798 but deportation figures have only been collected in the ISY since 1892.

At that time, the president was Benjamin Harrison.

However, the Yearbook or (YB) does not mention the total number of deportations during the presidential term which lasted from March of 1889 until March of 1893.

Thus, the number of deportations by presidential mandate can only be counted in the YB beginning with Grover Cleveland, whose second and last presidential term ran from March 1893 to March 1897. His total deportations were only 9,069.

Throughout the twentieth century, according to YB, deportations never exceeded the number reached by Democrat President Bill Clinton, whose presidential term ran from January 1993 to January 2001: 869,546.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, however, Republican candidate Donald Trump claimed that President Dwight Eisenhower had deported 1.3 million immigrants, even though the YB gives him only 110,019.

PolitiFact, a fact-checking website led by editors and journalists for the Tampa Bay Times, called Trump’s statement a half-truth because researchers found evidence that during the Eisenhower presidency the true number of deportations may have been high .

It was only in the 21st century that deportations soared, according to the YB. During the presidency of George W. Bush, whose period ran from January 2001 to January 2009, at least 2,012,539 foreigners were deported.

Obama took office in January 2009, and hands it over to Trump on January 20. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly threatened to deport all 11.1 million undocumented immigrants from the country.

After the Nov. 8 election, however, Trump has softened his stance, saying he could focus on deporting two to three million foreigners with criminal records.